Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I welcome the opportunity to talk to the Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020. I want to start by acknowledging my colleague Senator Faruqi, who has done a fantastic job working with stakeholders right around the country to stop this legislation going through today, to stop these cuts to university funding and to stop this culture war that the government's trying to drive by picking winners in the courses being offered at Australian universities. I'd also like to acknowledge all the stakeholders around the country, many of whom got in touch with me and my colleagues months ago saying they were very concerned about what they were hearing in relation to negotiations on this bill.

Why would the government be doubling fees for students in humanities and social sciences and cutting fees for students in other courses? Clearly, the fees that students pay are price signals, and by using price signals the government is actually trying to pick winners. It's trying to direct which students study which courses. There's no doubt that these are changes to incentives, and what's behind that is purely and simply a culture war. I started my university higher education with an arts degree. My father started his higher education with an arts degree and so did my brother, who is now a professor at Murdoch University in Western Australia. My daughter is currently studying an arts degree.

What reason would the government have to try to double fees for humanities and social sciences—fee rises of nearly 113 per cent across humanities courses—unless it didn't want more students to study humanities? I can only begin to speculate as to why the government wouldn't want more students to study the humanities. Why is it trying to direct students into courses like engineering and science? Surely these are the decision that should be made by students, based on a whole range of other important decision-making criteria, rather than the cost of their degree. Let's put this on the table and be completely clear about it. These perverse changes to fees will more than double the cost of a degree in the humanities and social sciences for a young person in this country. They will slash up to $900 million from vital funding for teaching and learning across the country, including from STEM and nursing courses, and they'll continue to punish young Australians who choose to study humanities.

The government claims to support regional universities with this plan and it doesn't stack up. We've heard evidence in the Senate inquiry that, indeed, it will also punish regional universities like the University of Tasmania, which I proudly worked at for nearly a decade before I went into the Senate. It will force regional universities to teach more students with less funding and will force their students to go into more debt to get their degrees. The consequences for regional communities will be more jobs lost, less local investment and fewer options for students. The package doesn't create anywhere near enough new places to satisfy emerging demands for education to reskill and retrain, especially during this pandemic, this COVID crisis. The bill guts research funding by rejecting the long-held notion that base funding, which is student fees plus government contribution, should provide for teaching, scholarship and base research capability. The package shifts costs of higher education from governments to students, more of a trend that we've seen from this government in the last seven years.

The Greens have always said—and we've been out and proud—that universities should be well funded, high quality and fee free for all students. We went to the last election with a policy to make higher education free, a policy that was fully funded, including by making large corporations pay their fair share of tax. We should be doing everything we can, especially during a pandemic, to get young people into universities, higher education or TAFEs. It's not a time for governments to be picking winners and trying to decide what kind of society Australia should be in 10, 15 or 20 years time based on the courses that students—young Australians, including young Tasmanians—should be choosing now.

We know that higher education has been hit incredibly hard by this COVID crisis. We know how many of those working at the University of Tasmania have lost their jobs, and this is something we've seen day in and day out at other universities around the country as fee income has dried up, especially from overseas students. The government's provided no assistance to these workers. They haven't been able to qualify for JobKeeper as so many other Australians have. The Greens have continually tried to get JobKeeper extended to university workers, just as we have to other sectors who have missed out on these stimulus payments. These laws will only make things worse. We want to see proper investment in our education—our universities and our TAFEs. We don't want to see them starved of funds.

In the last four minutes that I've got left, I just want to say that, in relation to the budget that the government brought down last night, there have been a lot of references to the most important budget since the Second World War, but that's where the similarities stop. The budget following the Second World War reformed this nation for more than a decade. It transformed our society and our country at a time of crisis. The Chifley government brought in significant reform. What we saw last night from this government was a cash splash designed to shore up their electoral prospects, probably at the end of next year. Where was the reform? Where was the vision, apart from the vision for Mr Scott Morrison's own re-election? This is a time when we need to be investing in our communities, for better education and better health care, and in actually tackling the great crises of our time: inequality and the climate crisis.

What we saw last night was just more funding for fossil fuel companies and tax cuts for the wealthy. These are two key economic programs that most economists—in fact, most first-year economics students—will tell you won't work in a recession and in a time of significant uncertainty. Receiving tax cuts in a recession means most people have a higher marginal propensity to save than to spend and get that money circulated through the economy. They'll pay off their mortgage. The Greens have always argued that 'debt' is not a dirty word, as long as it is spent wisely. But investing a significant proportion of more than $200 billion in new debt into tax cuts won't set this nation up for the next decade.

The nearly $213 billion in investment incentives for corporations won't work in a time of recession either. One thing I know about companies, having worked for many of them over the years, is that they always look at maximising the present value of future cash flows. They don't like uncertainty and they don't like risk, and that's exactly the environment they find themselves in now. Why would they go into significant expansion of their capital expenditure in a recession with such an uncertain economic outlook? Some companies may bring forward some future capital expenditure plans, but most companies won't be going out there and suddenly spending just because they're getting a government incentive to do so.

So the bulk of the money that was spent in this budget is going to two economic policy paradigms that most economists, and most first-year economics students, will tell you will fail Australia. This was a time for significant reform, and the bill that we have before us now is cutting funding to universities and cutting investment in our young people and in retraining middle-aged and older Australians. Education is critical for the—

Debate interrupted.